Sunday, July 6, 2014

Microsoft Excel date formatting tips

Change dates like 20050923 to one Excel can "understand"

Suppose you are looking at a worksheet which contains dates which can't be formatted as "real" dates because of their structure:

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Select the date(s), and use Data tab, Text-to-Columns,[Excel2003:Data|Text to Columns]

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Which brings up the Text-to-Columns wizard:

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Even though the dates are fixed width, in this case you can simply click "Next" twice.

In step 3 of wizard Select Date, YMD:

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If you click Finish now, the result will replace the dates. You can select another destination cell:

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Here's the result:

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